We’ve been really into playing God for a few years now. On the one hand, we have Bryan Johnson, a millionaire who lives to rejuvenate -and to sell you oil-. On the other hand, there is Colossal, a company that is doing more serious and interesting things. How far? Until the of chase resurrect the mammoth. At the moment there are more promises than realities, but they have managed to get the United Arab Emirates to give them a check for 60 million dollars.
Aim? Create the modern Noah’s Ark.
Colossal. This company dedicated to biotechnology has become popular for its objective not only in bring the mammoth back to lifebut also to the dodoto the moa either to the Tasmanian tiger. It does so from well-preserved DNA samples, to the interest of personalities such as Peter Jackson -director of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and great collector of moa bones– and, evidently, thanks to tremendously generous sums of money.
Colossal Biosciences has reached a assessment of more than 10,000 million dollars and, in the latest round, it has been 600 accumulated. Peter Jackson himself collaborated with 25 million for the company to place the moa in its goal list.
BioVault. Although there are those who think that What Colossal does is sell the motorcyclethey have achieved some results, like resurrecting the giant wolf. The theory is simple: they take the DNA of the extinct animal, combine it with samples from living relatives and the difficult part comes when they have to filter out the variants to polish the genes and get the animal they want. When they have it ready, they use the belly of a living animal to gestate the extinct creature.
UAE does not want them to resurrect anything. At least, that objective has not been made public, but due to Colossal’s activity, they have obtained thousands of DNA samples. And that is what we want to preserve in BioVault. The goal is a capsule in which the DNA of more than 10,000 species is stored, with a special focus at the beginning on the 100 most endangered species today. Which is it? They are in ‘coming soon‘.
Museum of the Future. For this, the United Arab Emirates will spend 60 million dollars, and once completed in 2027, this modern Noah’s Ark will be stored in the World Preservation Laboratory, which will be a part of the Museum of the Future from Dubai.
Inaugurated in 2022, it is a tremendous building, on par with the pharaonic works built in the Middle East at that time. particular architectural war in which the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are involved.
If it is spectacular on the outside, it is even more so on the inside, and precisely its name is due to the fact that it is a museum that does not show antiquity, but rather presents a journey to the future. To 2071, specifically.
The museum is outrageous
Backup. In the end, this is one of the largest and most important biotech deals. Ben Lamm, co-founder of Colossal, affirms that we are losing species at an alarming rate and the world “urgently needs a network of global BioVaults, a backup plan for life on Earth.”
He threw a dart at the financing of other biobanks, ensuring that they are fragmented, underfinanced and do not have a collaborative spirit that allows them to use data in the event of a crisis. In fact, it is estimated that half of the species on Earth will face extinction by 2050, and BioVault will be there to remedy it.
The big question is whether it will be worth bringing animals back just because we can when their ecosystems are destroyed.
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